The Idaho Observer has taken a dissident position on every
disease scare that exists. In each case, whether its AIDS, SARS,
West Nile, small/monkey/cow/mousepox, anthrax, the ?official?
stories used to scare people do not stand up to scientific
scrutiny, logic or even field experience. Mad cow is no different
except in one significant way: Prion diseases are currently all
up and down the food chain and all creatures with brains have
what it takes to be ravaged by mutated prions. What on earth has
caused this global propensity for madness? The answer to that is
why people must believe the official lies about mad cow.

Mad Cow or Manganese Madness?

From Friday's Journal

Mad Cow disease has been big in the news of late and I've been
studying the work of Mark Purdey for some good light on the
subject. Purdey is an English cattle farmer with personal
experience with the disease and an extraordinary amount of
scientific research on the subject under his belt.

False presumptions

Everyone seems now to assume that the cause of mad cow disease is
established and known. It is caused by a horrible "rogue prion"
that jumped from sheep into cattle when the cattle were fed meat
and bone meal that contained the remains of sheep that had
scrapie -- the sheep version of mad cow disease.

This meat and bone meal is made from the carcasses of all sorts
of animals, road kill, euthanized pets and sick farm animals --
all ground up and dried and made into powder. Once lodged in the
body of an animal or human, this rogue prion somehow multiplies
itself until it takes over your brain, fills your brain full of
holes like a sponge and then kills you.

Nothing destroys this rogue prion -- not cooking, not
irradiation, not the passage of time.

Everyone seems now to assume that this has been established
beyond controversy as the true cause of mad cow disease. It has a
strong emotional appeal because most people find the practice of
feeding meat and bone meal to naturally herbivorous cattle
perverse and disgusting.

Many well meaning people are using the concern over mad cow
disease to advocate banning this meat and bone meal as a feed for
cattle and raising cattle and other meat animals by organic
standards. I'm all in favor of organic farming and I'm all in
favor of feeding herbivorous cattle on their proper herbivorous
food. Nevertheless, now that I've studied Purdey's work, I'm not
at all convinced that we've been given the true story on the real
cause of mad cow disease. Purdey appears to have come closer to
the true cause of mad cow disease than anyone else.

Logic 101

Those who say that the problem of mad cow disease, and its human
equivalent Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, or CJD, would disappear if
the use of this meat and bone meal as cattle feed were altogether
banned, while well-intentioned and advocating something that I
certainly agree should be done, may not be right.

For instance, Purdey notes that the meat and bone meal was banned
in Britain in 1988, but nevertheless 40,000 cattle born after the
ban have come down with mad cow disease. Further, he notes that
in Ireland, Portugal, and France, there have been more cases of
mad cow disease reported in cattle born AFTER the meat and bone
meal feed was banned in these countries, than were being reported
before the bans. So the real cause of mad cow disease may very
well lie elsewhere than what we have all been told.

Phosmet and the warble fly

Mark Purdey's interest in mad cow disease began in 1982 when the
English government demanded that all cattle be treated with large
doses of an organophosphate insecticide called Phosmet, applied
along their spines in a systemic formulation designed to go
through the animal's skin and make its system toxic to the warble
fly.

Purdey was an organic farmer and didn't want to do it. He took
his case to court where he prevailed in 1984. The next year, mad
cow disease appeared in Britain and Purdey immediately suspected
it was connected to this warble fly eradication program. He
noticed that no cows born and raised on organic farms and not
treated with Phosmet, ever developed mad cow disease, although
the organic standards at the time allowed feeding these animals
some meat and bone meal. A few of his cattle developed mad cow
disease but they were all animals he had purchased and brought in
from conventional farms.

Immaculate replication?

Purdey thought that the advocates of the "rogue prion in the
meat-and-bone-meal" theory hadn't done a very good job of
explaining how this rogue prion was created in the first place.
Purdey also found there were no explanations as to how these
rogue prions replicated themselves once they had invaded their
host. Therefore, Purdey reasoned, the meat-and-bone-meal theory
cannot explain how the rogue prions could eventually gain the
force of numbers to turn one's brain into a sponge.

This "rogue" prion is not a virus, it is not a bacteria, it is
not a fungus, it is not a tiny parasitic animalcule. It is not a
living organism of any sort. It is a protein molecule. In high
school biology class we learn that protein molecules do not
replicate themselves sexually; we learn that proteins are
assembled upon demand from resources found in our bodies and
manufactured according to codes and templates for their structure
contained in our DNA.

Thus far I have not heard any of the advocates of the popular
theory explain this unique self-multiplying property of this
particular prion protein molecule. To my knowledge, no other
protein molecule in the universe has ever demonstrated such
behavior.

The Mad Cowboy

I heard Howard Lyman, the Mad Cowboy, in a radio interview
recently. Lyman, author of a book entitled, "The Mad Cowboy",
popularized the subject of mad cow disease in America with his
appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show in 1996. I liked listening
to Lyman as he's obviously a very well-intentioned man who has
dedicated his life to the promotion of organic farming. I
couldn't help but notice, however, that his presentation did not
contain any science to back up his explanation of the cause and
spread of mad cow disease.

The scientific cowboy

Purdey, on the other hand, has been proceeding logically to
determine how the prions replicate and how mad cow really
spreads. Suspecting Phosmet was involved but not wanting to jump
to any conclusions, Purdey hired Dr. Stephen Whatley of the
Institute of Psychiatry in London, to subject brain cell cultures
to doses of Phosmet to see if this would create the rogue prion.
As I've come to understand, prion proteins are normal
constituents of nerve and brain tissue but deformed, abnormal
prions are being found in the brains of the poor wretched
creatures who die from mad cow disease.

Whatley's tests caused some deformation of the prion protein, but
not in the precise configuration found in the mad cow disease. So
Purdey went back to square one and continued researching further,
with a willingness to abandon his initial hypothesis if the
evidence could not be found to support it.

Purdey observed that the mad cow disease, and its human form CJD,
and the same disease found amongst deer and referred to as
chronic wasting disease (CWO), were occurring in clusters in
certain areas here and there around the world.

This was another point where he found the popular theory not
making sense. If mad cow disease were really caused by the cattle
eating meat and bone meal, and if CJD were really caused by
people eating beef, then the disease should be occurring at
random over broad areas, not in clusters in, certain small
limited areas.

Purdey also observed that Britain was exporting large amounts of
meat and bone meal to a number of countries such as India, South
Africa and Saudi Arabia, and yet the cattle there were not
developing mad cow disease.

Further he noted that several antelope in the London Zoo came
down with mad cow disease but they had never eaten meat and bone
meal. He also observed how several cows on an English government
experimental farm, raised totally on grass and silage with no
meat and bone meal, developed mad cow disease.

These things just didn't add up to support the official theory.
Since the disease was occurring in clusters in certain limited
areas, Purdey logically suspected that environmental factors --
something peculiar to the environment of these areas -- was
likely the cause of prion disease outbreaks.

(I recently heard a radio news report this morning about a
cluster of CJD cases appearing in a town in New Jersey; more
confirmation of Purdey's observations).

Common environmental factors discovered

Purdey traveled to as many mad cow disease cluster areas -- or
maybe I should call them spongiform encephelopathy cluster areas,
since they included CJD and CWD areas as well.

"Spongiform" means that it's full of little holes like a sponge;
"encephelo" means brain, and "pathy" means disease. So
"spongiform encephelopathy" is just a fancy name for a disease
that fills your brain full of little holes so it looks like a
sponge.

Anyway, Purdey traveled to as many areas around the world as he
could get to, where clusters of the spongiform encephelopathy
diseases were occurring, to examine the local environments.
Purdey was searching for unusual conditions that may be common
among areas reporting incidence of prion disease.

Purdey reports that, in all these areas, he found a certain
package of similar environmental factors.

One was a very low level of copper in the soil, so that animals
and people living there would tend to be deficient in copper.

Another was an abnormally high level of manganese, either
naturally occurring in the soil or, in many cases, as a result of
a local industry polluting the area with manganese.

Manganese madness"

Purdey's investigations revealed is a condition called "manganese
madness" developed with some frequency by manganese miners, with
symptoms essentially the same as CJD. So it began to look likely
that these spongiform encephelopathy diseases were forms of
manganese poisoning. It is said that CJD is very similar to
Alzheimer's disease, which is generally attributed to metal
toxicity from aluminum and mercury. It makes sense that CJD could
be due to similar metal toxicity from manganese.

Another factor common to mad cow disease clusters, Purdey found,
was either very high levels of ultraviolet light due to high
altitude, or frequent sonic shocks caused by sonic booms of
supersonic aircraft, frequent explosions or, in a few cases,
proximity to a rumbling volcano. So he set out to discover how
this particular package of environmental factors could be causing
brains to turn into sponges.

Scientific support for empirical observations

Purdey then found that his work connected very well with the work
of Dr. David Brown of Cambridge University. Dr. Brown had
demonstrated that normal, healthy prion protein bonds to copper
in the normal, healthy brain and nervous system. Remember, this
prion protein is a normal constituent of a normal brain; it is
abnormal or deformed prion proteins that are associated with
spongiform encephelopathy disease.

Is it the abnormal prion that causes the disease or is it some
unhealthy factor in the environment that causes the prion to
become deformed and abnormal and this leads to the disease"

Purdey published a paper proposing that: Manganese could, in the
presence of copper deficiency in the animal or human, substitute
for copper in the prion protein, thus producing the abnormal
prion found in the brains of spongiform encephelopathy disease
victims.

This was a hypothesis based on his field work in the areas where
clusters of mad cow and CJD were occurring and where, he
observed, all these areas had unusually low levels of copper in
the soil and unusually high levels of manganese in either the
soil or the atmosphere.

Amazingly, his experiments produced the key deformation of the
prion protein which the earlier tests using organophosphate (OP)
insecticides like the Phosmet (Purdey initially suspected as the
cause of mad cow disease at the Institute of Psychiatry) had
failed to create. These experiments represented the first time
that malformed prion protein had been created experimentally as a
de novo transformation.

So it appears that these experiments definitively answered the
key question of where this abnormal prion came from in the first
place, something I have not heard the advocates of the
conventional theory do with any clarity.

What I have heard them say is that the rogue prion originally
came from sheep with scrapie disease. How the sheep got it in the
first place is not explained. But because scrapie-diseased sheep
brains were included in the meat and bone meal fed to cattle, the
prion got into cattle where it then proceeded to multiply itself
by the gazillions.

Again they don't explain how the prion multiplies itself. And if
a person eats meat or a beef byproduct such as a gelatin capsule
that contains one of these rogue prions, again it can multiply
itself by the gazillions in the brain of the unfortunate person
until it turns his or her brain into a sponge and he or she dies
a most wretched death.

Supplementation over slaughter

Further, it appears that here we would also have the real key to
preventing spongiform encephelopathy disease -- not by mass
slaughter of healthy animals as the government is wont to do, on
the premise that they may harbor rogue prions which they will
eventually transmit to somebody, and not by electronically
tagging and tracking every animal, but by simply making sure that
the animals -- or we ourselves -- do not suffer from copper
deficiencies in their nutrition.

The conventional theory has made many people worried sick over
getting CJD and they've given up meat eating and continue to live
in anxiety that they may get CJD from a stray prion that has
wormed its devilish way into a gelatin capsule or bar of soap.

It certainly sounds to me that, if people are concerned over CJD,
the wise thing to do would be to take a mineral supplement that
would assure them of adequate copper. They might also prevent
themselves from getting gray hair that way, as I've heard Dr.
Joel Wallach, the "dead-doctors-don't-lie" man, say that gray
hair is the result of copper deficiency.

Purdey further reports that researchers at Case Western
University in Cleveland analyzed brain tissue from victims of
CJD. These brain tissues, compared to control brains, reportedly
contained a ten-fold higher level of manganese and a 50 percent
reduced level of copper -- and the manganese was bonded to the
abnormal prions in these CJD tissues.

Political hay

The fanatic vegetarians of course like to use this fear in the
service of their cause but it is wrong to promote anything on
false premises. Let vegetarianism be promoted by whatever
truthful arguments can be mustered up for it, not by false
theories of the cause of spongiform encephelopathy diseases.

Riddle solved"

So it looks like the riddle of what causes these spongiform
encephelopathy diseases is essentially solved. It's a form of
manganese poisoning that can occur in the presence of a copper
deficiency.

Purdey has some further refinements to add to the picture. For
instance, what about the Phosmet Purdey initially suspected as
the cause of mad cow disease"

Purdey found that Phosmet chelates copper out of the bodies of
the cattle, thus leading to the copper deficiency that then
allowed mad cow disease to develop. There are organophosphate
pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers humans use for various
purposes that can have a similar effect on us.

More observations in support of the OP/copper/manganese
hypothesis

Purdey says Britain had the highest rate of mad cow disease
because of the compulsory warble fly eradication program that
required all farmers to treat their cattle with high doses of
systemic Phosmet applied along the spine. Other countries that
experienced some outbreak of the disease but not as much as
Britain either did not have such a compulsory program or used the
organophosphates in lower doses or non-systemically.

Another product Purdey implicates in mad cow disease is
artificial milk substitute often fed to calves, which have up to
1,000 times the level of manganese found in natural cow's milk.

Purdey observed that the mad cow, CJD and CWD cluster areas all
were subject either to frequent sonic shocks or very high levels
of ultraviolet light.

Copper is used in wires as an efficient conductor of electricity;
manganese is used in batteries to store electricity. Purdey
hypothesizes that the normal prion protein, bonded to copper,
facilitates a smooth flow of the energy brought into the nervous
system via sound and light. Conversely, when manganese
substitutes for copper, energy would have a tendency to be stored
rather than allowed to flow. This could result in explosive
releases of energy, thereby progressively deteriorating the brain
tissues in the spongiform pattern.

It's quite an ingenious explanation. I haven't heard the
proponents of the official theory advance a scientifically viable
explanation as to why the rogue prion causes spongiform
deterioration of the brain.

Purdey also suspects the sonic shocks from supersonic airplanes
could be altering the magnetic qualities of manganese in such a
way as to promote an even more rapid degeneration of the brain
tissues.

The kuru copper connection

Another case that is frequently mentioned in discussions of mad
cow disease, is the disease called "kuru" that has afflicted many
members of the Fore tribe in New Guinea.

Being essentially the same as CJD, kuru is always attributed to
traditions of cannibalism specific to these people.

The public readily accepts this explanation since cannibalism is
morally and emotionally repugnant to most people and, therefore,
it seems a sort of divine or poetic justice that it would lead to
a horrible disease like kuru.

It's sort of similar to the way sodomy is repugnant to people of
normal sexual desires, and so some see it as a sort of divine or
poetic justice that it's practice be blamed for transmitting
AIDS.

However, Purdey observed that many other New Guinea tribes were
cannibals but only the Fore were getting kuru.

Curiously, the Fore people had been cannibals for centuries but
had only started getting kuru after World War II. Purdey traveled
there to examine the environment, and found the local soils
deficient in copper.

Manganese/aluminum alloy and kuru-type madness

Completing the picture, during World War II some Japanese
airplanes had crashed in the area. The Fore people had made
utensils and cooking pots from the manganese-aluminum metal they
salvaged from these airplanes -- a likely source of manganese
poisoning.

Purdey also found that a cluster of CJD cases had developed in
the Fuji River valley in Japan, downwind from the factory where
the manganese-aluminum panels for these airplanes were
manufactured, where the atmosphere was tainted with
manganese-laden emissions from the factory smokestacks.

Dissidence deadlier than disease

Science these days is inevitably entangled with politics, and
Purdey found that in advancing his perspective on the true cause
of mad cow disease, he evidently displeased some powerful
political interests. His house burned down. His lawyer, who had
helped him with his court case against the government's mandatory
Phosmet program and his veterinarian, who was assisting in his
research, both died in strange auto accidents. Attempts were made
to slander and discredit him morally and professionally.

What political interests would want to interfere with his efforts
to bring some objective science to the question of the cause of
mad cow disease"

The chemical industry that makes $billions from organophosphate
sales would well have an interest in not having these chemicals
linked to causing outbreaks of prion diseases.

Their competition is traditional family farmers who raise crops
and livestock without chemicals. If word got out that global
madness through mutated prions was linked to genetically
engineered crops treated with OPs, multinational corporate
agribusiness would suffer a public relations disaster from which
it may never recover.

It would well suit these agribusiness interests to put
traditional family farmers out of business. Since there is no
science to support the mass slaughter of infected animals, it is
logical to suspect that public fear of eating contaminated meat
or is nurtured in the press to justify government slaughter
programs. Rather than exterminating the rogue prions, government
slaughter programs are helping to exterminate agribusiness'
competition: The family farmer.

Big Brother implications

The official theory also furnishes a convenient rationale to
mandate electronic tagging and tracking of all livestock via
microchips. Developing the livestock surveillance infrastructure
lays the groundwork for applying such a surveillance system to
people.

Chemical/copper connection known for half a century

In an article entitled "The Grammar of BSE Panic" in the
February, 2004 edition of "Acres U.S.A." we find these words:

"Writing some 50 years ago in SOIL, GRASS & CANCER" Andre Voisin
noted how certain chemicals interfered with the uptake of copper
even when that nutrient was available in the pastures.

"He called this 'disease' epizootic ataxia. It sounds like bovine
spongiform encephelopathy to us, and the university-blessed
grinding of cats, dogs, cows, chickens and horses to make
cattle-cake was not even a blip on the radar screen at that
time...After England experienced BSE cases in animals, now
identified by prions bent out of shape, the defenders of
toxic-genetic chemicals postulated an infectious disease agent of
some sort and resultant transmissibility.

"The answer was to shoot herds and to construct a theory with a
politically-correct etiology. The only rule seemed to be, 'Do not
implicate phosphate factories spewing their pollution into the
ambient air, and never, never indict Phosmet poured on animal
spines...There are several chemical agents quite capable of
turning a brain into a sponge. Mercury and Minimata disease come
to mind."

Official story does not pass basic scientific muster

In the same publication indicated above, a letter from the
Minnesota COACT organization (www.coact.org) said, "BSE fails to
fulfill what is known as 'Koch's postulates' -- the yardstick for
gauging whether a given disease stems from infectious origins.
Briefly, they are

1. The causal agent is found in all symptomatic animals;

2. The causal agent is not found with other diseases; and

3. The causal agent can be isolated and cultured, then reproduced
in a susceptible host."

COACT also noted that, "A BSE prion is a protein particle that
does not contain DNA or RNA."

So without any DNA or RNA how does one of these bloody things
jump off your hamburger and into your body and so it can madly
replicate itself until your brain has been turned into a sponge"

***

Editor's Comments

Since the powers-that-be have an interest in maintaining the
rogue prion theory as the cause of mad cow disease in public
perception, you won't hear of Purdey's work being reported in the
dominant media.

But what Purdey says makes sense and his theories are supported
by 50 years of published science where the official theory would
not pass a high school biology test. So I've put on my
journalist's hat and have written this to do my bit to get the
word out to the public, because that's the only way we can hope
to get the truth out.

Thomas Jefferson said, "If the people lead, then eventually the
leaders will follow."

If we can make the truth about mad cow disease common enough
knowledge amongst the general public, then the authorities of the
scientific world will finally accept it.

Unfortunately though, if that happens, the authorities of the
scientific world will not give Purdey the credit he deserves but
will claim to have discovered it themselves: "Can't allow the
peasants to think they can do anything important."

It's like 75 years ago the health nuts were saying you could
prevent cancer by eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables.
The medical authorities debunked it and said your diet had
nothing to do with whether or not you got cancer. But the health
nuts kept on, and eventually the general public came to
understand the relationship between diet and cancer that the
medical authorities have suddenly discovered you can reduce your
risk of cancer by eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables.

But they cite their own studies in support of this radical
concept and do not give the health nuts of 75 years ago any
credit for having known it all along.

One problem with communicating Purdey's perspective is that it
takes a little bit of study to understand it. The official theory
is very easy to understand and emotionally grabbing. "They're
feeding rotten meat to cows that are supposed to eat grass!"
Which I agree is not the right thing to do, but that doesn't
prove it's really the cause of mad cow disease.

Purdey's writing by contrast is fairly technical and I had to
read it through about six times before I understood it. Not many
people will bother to do that. Although, since I'm just a high
school dropout and not very bright, most people wouldn't have to
study it near as much as I did to understand it. So I've written
this to try to put Purdey's perspective in as plain and simple
language as I can to try to help more people understand it.

So, if you think this article is saying something true and
important, HELP GET THE WORD OUT! Make more copies of this, put
it up on websites, email it or snail mail it to as many people as
you can. And, of course, it would be great if you'd read Purdey's
work for yourself and don't depend just on me for your
understanding of it.

The difference between us and the dominant media is that we do
the best we can to tell each other the truth so we can make the
most of our lives and raise our children in a decent world
whereas the dominant media engages psychological warfare against
you, in order to deceive and mislead you into supporting its big
business advertisers. (DWH)

***

You can read Purdey's work for yourself at his website, which is
at www.markpurdey.com.

Bouncer

07-10-2006, 11:36 AM

Absolutely brilliant! I remember reading a book about the "evolution" of these related diseases, but curiously absent was the proper explanation of how an organic molecule could replicate like a virus.

As for the "cover-up", it sounds like the usual status quo. Don't break it if it ain't fixed.

Here's something else: I never read in the textbooks about the firebombing of Tokyo that killed at least 100,000 people: